Skiing in Japan

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The snow here is amazing; especially for this bloke from Oz where snow is measured in centimetres (if we're lucky) as opposed to here where it's measured in metres. Some of the drifts are still 2-3m deep in the village and up to 5m on the upper slopes of Mt Niseko.

To everyones delight it snowed heavily overnight, giving rise to eager anticipation of powder skiing. The only reason that I'm sharing this enthusiam for the sticky powdery stuff is to soften the steeper icy runs, which were the cause of me landing heavily on my bum several times yesterday - at least that's my excuse.

The excitement of powder however wasn't welcomed when we walked to the village for dinner last night while trying to restrain two lively boys from tossing sticky snow balls at their sister. As beautiful as it is in short doses I really don't think I would like to deal with this environment for months at a time.

What is a little disconcerting is the overlapping of the ski runs. It's not difficult to start off on a (medium) green run to accidentally find yourself sliding into a red or part of a black run. With names like 'Legend of Shinya', 'Superstition', 'Challenge' and 'Misoshiru' (Massive), these black runs are not for yours truely. Despite those little problems, the skiing is fantastic, however it will take some getting use to dealing with the relative short runs on Mt Buller.

One thing which has particularly impressed me on the slopes is the courtesy of the snow boarders compared to Oz. Here they actually share the slopes instead of trying to dominate them.

The Japanese people are interesting. Having not rubbed shoulders with any Japanese before I find them very polite and eager to help though generally unsmiling. Unlike Europe and even South America, the language barrier outside the tourism industry is huge. Despite English being a popular second language for students here, it's not compulsory and a lot of communication is done via charades.

Ciao for now.

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